Author's Note: It's been forever since I was last able to update and I've been working on this for ages. I hope you enjoy the second chapter between these two!
A few weeks pass since Lyl left Kitten on her doorstep.
Except for some light and flirtatious conversation via text, the two women had not been able to catch each other at the Jade Queen again. It seemed that whenever Kitten came to buy in the morning, Lyl was working the night shift. If Lyl took on the day shift, Kitten often came by at night.
Playfully lamenting over their bad luck and conflicting routines became a regular topic of their messages.
Though Lyl was sure that the floral femme she had become so infatuated with frustrations were mostly in jest, her own were closer to truth. She wanted to see Kitten so badly at times that she considered dropping in on her place before, during, or after work. The memory of the woman spread out beneath her and swathed in violet light snuck into her mind here and there, often getting her off track with her duties at the pot shop.
As badly as she wanted to see that in real life again, she knew better, avoided the subject and resisted the urge to ask. She was sure Kitten would invite her over for another round when she was ready.
"This isn't like you, you like that girl too much."
The nasal drone of her bookish brother, Malcolm, shook Lyl out of her thoughts. They were at their warehouse tucked into a nook of forest outside of Seattle, a grow for their hundreds of cannabis plants. She had come to go over the accounts with her sibling who practically lived there with a handful of assistants to tend and harvest the crop. He had a better head for numbers and a greener thumb for growing cannabis than she did.
Since childhood they had always been opposites in both body and personality. Where Lyl was the quiet and kind one, her brother Malcolm was often sharp and rude. He had taken after their mother physically, making him short, thin, and myopic. The thick glasses he needed often made him a target for bullying during their school days. It was even worse in high school when it became apparent that his older sister was so obviously much larger, taller, and stronger. The teasing led to his somewhat dour personality in adulthood. However, beneath it all he was a sweet little man who cared about his sibling that always jumped to his defense.
"Eh...what?" Lyl asked, looking up from a spreadsheet of numbers. She'd been staring at a certain column because the total was just one number off from Kitten's address.
"The one who looks like she stepped out of an Anthropologie catalogue," Malcolm replies, something of a sneer in his tone. "Looks like she'd make friends with every dog, cat, and Bambi who crossed her way. The one you've been daydreaming about and sneaking off to-"
"Okay, alright! I get it!" Lyl rolls her eyes and throws down her spreadsheets on the table, "So what?"
"So what!? We had a rule about customers and you made me swear I wouldn't flirt with that cute dude-"
"Not fair," the woman interjects, "he was applying to be one of our budtenders. Kitten doesn't work for us and she's still buying regularly. She even leaves tips."
"So it's true. You must really like this one if you gave her a *pet* name." Only Malcolm could put so much disdain behind a word like "pet" that it almost sounded like he spat it rather than said it.
Lyl thought her explanation was fairly simple but her brother only glared at her with narrowed eyes.
"Malcolm..." she sighs, clearly exasperated.
"Just don't let it get in the way of your work," the man interjects, pointing a pencil at his sister, "harvest is just a few weeks away and I'm cutting it close with this latest crop in our Tacoma warehouse. I'm thinking of leaving you and Brooks to look after the girls here while I oversee that one personally."
This makes Lyl raise her brows curiously, the "girls" he was referring to were their best plants kept on these grounds. Brooks, her brother's right hand man, also had a passion for growing premium weed but a much softer demeanor. He was a mousy white boy from California with hippie parents.
Things must be really bad if her brother felt the need to pick up and move.
He had his own condo in the city but he spent so much time here that they had a bedroom and full bathroom built adjacent to his office. After all of his assistants left for the day Malcolm often remained. He preferred the grow, doing the books, and dedicating himself to their care than most human relationships.
"Everything fine down there?" Lyl asks, a skeptical look on her face.
"Yeah, they're just not doing exactly everything to my liking..." the man trails off, mumbling something under his breath about manure as he begins to collect his charts and belongings spread across the table, "Anyway, go home and get some rest. Brooks will do most of the work but I'll send you a schedule so you can check up on him. I'm driving to Tacoma in the morning."
Seeing that her brother wouldn't allow any room for comments or argument, Lyl packed up her spreadsheets and headed out into the night.
The air was cold and damp as the broad woman shrugged on her denim jacket, the hood and insides lined with fluffy sheepskin to further guard against the forest's chill. A pale concrete path leads her away from the sliding doors of the Jade Queen's offices to a small gravel parking lot where her car awaits her. Though she can smell the rain in the air and feel a few droplets on her brow, she produces a joint and manages to light it successfully as she leans against the trunk of her car.
There are other vehicles in the lot outside of her and her brother's. She recognizes all but one that must surely belong to a new employee. They had a rotation of crops on their piece of land and harvested a ripened field earlier that week. Given that it was the time of the Big Dark, it was only 7pm though it felt more like 11pm, but the tenders have usually gone home by now. With her brother going to Tacoma, he must have them working overtime before he left to make for less complications while he was gone.
Reflections about their cannabis business swirled through Lyl's head as she leaned against her car and enjoyed her joint. How they'd begun with just a few plants, some prize money, and a weak dream that grew before they knew it. She and her brother were very aware of how lucky they were in this budding industry. Every festival and cannabis themed event they went to reminded them of one simple fact, not many Black people (mixed or no) were able to build what they had. It wasn't an industry particularly welcome to people of color in general but somehow they made the right moves and pissed the least amount of people off to make it.
